As Chris Miller observed, semiconductors are to the 21st century what oil and steel were to the 20th century.

Between 1937 and 1941, Japan’s war against China influenced U.S. relations with Tokyo. After 1940, the United States began to impose export controls on the trade of all items useful to the Japanese military. This motivated imperial Japan to lash out before it lost the means of waging effective war. The U.S. is now imposing similar controls on Communist China. And although necessary, the Biden administration‘s restrictions on semiconductor exports to Beijing bring a war with China closer.